General Chat

I look regularly at 'My threads'. That tells me whether anybody had added anything to my last comment, or at least it would if I could remember what time and date and page my comment was on. I always look at my threads anyway and dont often look at other threads on the boards.

Huia. (who is on genesreunited.co.nz)

Re the alerts and guidelines. I am well aware that GR send out pm alerts but I am talking about replying to threads about which there is no advice anywhere on the GR help boards.

Many of the problems of helpers getting frustrated with people not replying to information found for them, are caused because those people, mostly new folk, do not know how to find their message again once they have posted it.


I have been a member of Genes almost from the beginning, but didn't use these boards for a long time. However, when I did first begin to post, I hadn't a clue either. I used to scroll up and down the pages in desperation looking for the message I had put on. My Threads on the left, meant nothing to me, I didn't even know what a thread was. It took a long time for the penny to drop and I got told off in the meantime.


After seeing so many unpleasant threads about helpers being annoyed that their work was not being acknowledged, I decided to try and help out.


When I have time, I send a pm to those who haven't replied,......'hoping that they do not mind me contacting them, but there are replies to the message they posted. If unsure about how to access the replies, then simply click on Community/My Threads/Message heading and all will be revealed'...........words to that effect.

I do this not only to try and stop the frustration of the helpers, but also so that the new folk do not miss out on info which could be important to them.

The pm's I receive back show how many other folk were are as stuck now as I was when I first began.

If I post on other genealogy sites I get an alert every time someone posts. If I wish to unsubscribe to one of the threads, then there is the facility to do so so that it does not become a nuisance to me.

No improvement suggestion here but a reply to Bernie. It would be almost impossible to write a program to include every town/county, etc. in the country. Not only that, but do you have any idea of how many people think they were born somewhere other than where they actually were born?
Thousands of people even to-day, believe that where they grew up is where they were born, and they can be wrong....Many of our ancestors were born in places which don't even exist any more - not under the original name, anyway.

I do wonder why I find that both Genes and Friends Reunited tend to jump around when I use Internet Explorer 8. No other website bounces. I downloaded Google Chrome and they keep still in that. If all other websites keep still, why not Reunited?

Point taken Berona, but I still waste an awful lot of time deleting no-chancers from my Hot Matches.

I would like to see a better way of deleting names added by mistake without having to start by deleting the children.

Impossible if you are the child

Quinsgran that is so true! Isn't it a pain to find you've made a genuine error and have to start messing about with where to start with the deletions? Surely the GR whizz kids can come up with someting easier?

I would like to see the name of the ancestor clearly visible in Hot Matches without having to open it up (View) to find out who it refers to.

Bernie - I tick them all and delete them in the hope that THEY will contact ME. If I don't get many, I might check to see if there is a particular one which looks interesting - but I would be happier if I could see who they are first - hence my suggestion as above.

I should like it to stop telling me to sign in, at the time I tried to post just now, when I was already signed in; this same thing happened a few weeks ago.

I am fairly happy with the site, I joined in 2005, green as grass took me forever to come to grips with things that now are second nature. Think it took me a while to realise what the community was (I know!!!) but some of us are not as computer litterate as others, and I am an activist and cannot stand reading through 'how to use' information!!

I have found so many relations through hot matches and am indebted to them, however I think some tidying up of that part could be helpful. One gripe I have is, as already mentioned, when you seem to have a name and date match but the location is totally way out, to me it is not a match! The other is that when a person leaves Gene's the tree should be set to maybe an absent person so that you do not keep on sending messages to a non existent member, very frustrating!

i may think of some other things later, but thanks for the chance to air my views - oh and moderators would be a good idea!

How about a decent page for photos? The one that we have keeps beheading people (or it did when it first started so I gave up using it). It would be nice if we could put some of our photos on for others to see, and I dont just mean ancestral photos - photos of meets or scenery etc. Perhaps have a limit on the number of photos anybody could post, with the ability for us to delete if we want to add more. On some threads peeps are talking of emailing photos to each other but if there are lots of peeps wanting to see them it would be so much easier on the boards. I know I would like to see some of the photos they have mentioned but dont want to add to their long list.

With another website I am on I can add photos to the threads, eg, I could put a photo on this thread.

Huia.

Key functionality missing with the tree builder:
If a person appears twice in your tree, it's not possible to link to an existing person on your tree. So for example, if I find two people that married were actually 2nd cousins with the same great grandparents, I have to add the great grandparents twice, once for each of their great grandchildren.

This means that I can't use the GR tree as my master tree; I have to use software on my PC to maintain a master family tree.

Other genealogy sites do allow "existing people" to be linked to new entries.

This is a serious weakness of the GR site.

Regards